Researchers assumed that demanding, child-centered parenting norms were scaring people away from having kids. A new study found the opposite: people who believe in intensive parenting want more children, not fewer.

Birth rates have been falling across high-income countries for decades, and researchers have proposed many explanations. One of the most intuitive: intensive parenting, the modern expectation that raising a child should be emotionally absorbing, financially demanding, and constantly enriching, might be scaring people away from having kids at all, or from having more than one.

A study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family tested that assumption directly, and the data ran the opposite direction.

Researchers Sunnee Billingsley, Stefanie Möllborn, and Gerda Neyer analyzed data from the 2021 Swedish Generations and Gender Survey, drawing on responses from 3,397 Swedish adults, women aged 18 to 40 and men aged 18 to 45, who had no physical barriers to having children and were not currently pregnant. Using a detailed set of questions capturing multiple dimensions of intensive parenting belief, they sorted respondents into distinct attitudinal groups and tested how those beliefs related to three things: intentions to remain childless, to postpone parenthood, and to stop after one or two children.

The researchers expected a negative relationship, consistent with the theory that intensive parenting norms function as a deterrent. Using linear probability models, they instead found a positive relationship between holding intensive parenting attitudes and intending to become a parent at all, and intending to have a third child or more.

“Intensive parenting attitudes and the desire for children act as a package deal,” the researchers concluded. “Rather than scaring people away, embracing the heavy demands of modern parenting aligns with a commitment to family building.”

Why this isn’t the first time researchers found the reverse

This finding isn’t isolated. The authors note that a study of American mothers found those who invested more intensively in early childrearing, measured through breastfeeding duration, went on to have more children, not fewer. Research in the UK found that mothers’ likelihood of having a second child wasn’t lower even among those who felt constantly strained by parenting demands. A study in Germany found that fatherhood, financial, and child-centeredness norms had little measurable effect on whether people had a first, second, or third child at all.

The pattern across these studies suggests something different from the “intensive parenting deters childbearing” theory: the people who most strongly endorse demanding, child-centered parenting norms may be the same people who were already inclined toward family-building, and who see having children as core to their identity and life goals. The parenting ideology and the desire for children aren’t in tension. They travel together.

What this means for the falling-birth-rate debate

None of this explains why birth rates are declining. Sweden’s birth rate, like that of most high-income countries, has continued to fall even as this study finds intensive parenting attitudes coexist comfortably with wanting more kids.

What the study does is rule out one popular explanation. If intensive parenting beliefs were the primary driver of declining fertility, people who hold those beliefs most strongly should show the weakest intentions to have children. Instead they show the strongest ones. Whatever is driving the broader decline, whether it’s cost of living, housing, delayed partnership formation, or career pressures, this particular cultural narrative about parenting itself doesn’t appear to be a major piece of it, at least not in Sweden’s context of strong parental leave and childcare support.

The study is based on stated intentions rather than actual births, and intentions don’t always convert into behavior. Sweden’s robust social safety net for parents may also make it easier for people who embrace intensive parenting ideals to act on their desire for more children than would be the case in countries with less support. Whether the same pattern holds in the US or other countries with weaker family policy is an open question.

The study, “Are Intensive Parenting Attitudes a Deterrent to Childbearing?” was authored by Sunnee Billingsley, Stefanie Möllborn, and Gerda Neyer, and published in the Journal of Marriage and Family in 2026.

Source: Stockholm University. DOI: 10.1111/jomf.70118